In New Hampshire, an Anxious Political Landscape as Voting Nears

NELSON, N.H. — In this tiny New England town, population 729, with its white steepled church and village green, Hunt and Allison Aldrich Smith, Democrats who support Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, live in a knotty pine house they built themselves.

Mr. Smith, 71, makes violins in his wood-stove-heated studio here in the southwest corner of New Hampshire, crafting his instruments of spruce and maple just as they have been for centuries. “We have very simple needs,” said Ms. Smith, 56, a choir director who teaches traditional New England dances and revels in the town’s artistic heritage.

And yet, although she and her husband are comfortable, many other families were “in crisis” because they cannot afford to put food on the table, Ms. Smith said. She is also worried about the state’s heroin epidemic, which is ravaging families and taking hundreds of young lives.

She supports Mr. Sanders, she said, because “we’re here to help each other, and I like what he says about a more fair corporate tax structure.”

That mix of contentment and unease hints at the complex dynamics at play in New Hampshire this election season as the national spotlight swivels from the small, quirky state of Iowa to this even smaller, arguably quirkier state, which votes Tuesday.

New Hampshire survived the Great Recession better than many states. Today it ranks at or near the top in several categories that measure a state’s health, like median household income, level of education and general well-being. Its rates of unemployment, crime and people living below the poverty line are among the lowest.

“We’re better than average, economically speaking,” said Bill Getty, 57, a mental health counselor, after hearing Senator Ted Cruz, the Texas Republican running for president, speak in Exeter at the brick town hall. “But not everything is milk and honey.”

Mr. Getty, too, pointed to the heroin epidemic. The state had an estimated 399 opioid overdose deaths in 2015, a 22 percent increase over the year before. In a survey last fall, 25 percent of voters said the heroin epidemic was the most important issue confronting the state, ahead of the economy. “It is so overwhelming,” Mr. Getty said. “It dominates every conversation.”

Andrew E. Smith, a political scientist and pollster at the University of New Hampshire, said that voters’ mixed feelings reflected in part their generally positive views of their own lives and their more negative views of the country as a whole; 61 percent of New Hampshire voters say the state is headed in the right direction, but only 35 percent say the same about the country.

“The economy is not what it used to be,” said Steve Hoffner, 42, a truck driver in Farmington, a blue-collar town in east-central New Hampshire. He and his wife, Faye, 47, who works in insurance administration, both strongly back Donald J. Trump in Tuesday’s Republican primary.

“We aren’t angry,” Ms. Hoffner said as they waited for Mr. Trump to appear in their high school gymnasium, which was festooned with a banner that read, “Make America Great Again!” “We just don’t want a career politician. The biggest concern for me is getting America back to where it was.”

Voters’ outlooks on the country are sharply divided along partisan lines. Polls show that 66 percent of New Hampshire Democrats believe the country is on the right track, but only 5 percent of Republicans agree. Much of the Republican dissatisfaction stems from disapproval of President Obama, his overhaul of the health care system and his support for gun control.

“We’re on the edge of the precipice,” said Nancy Kindler, 67, of Epping, echoing the words of Mr. Cruz, whom she supports. Her concerns include a fear that the country is becoming “more socialistic,” freedoms are being eroded and government is imposing too many regulations on people and businesses.

“I’m worried sick for my children and grandchildren,” she said.

The two parties in New Hampshire also differ on which issues are most important. Since the terrorist attacks last fall in Paris and San Bernardino, Calif., Republicans have rated national security at the top, with 34 percent citing it as their priority; next are the economy at 26 percent and immigration at 11 percent.

Among Democrats, 26 percent rate the economy as the top issue, while 13 percent say national security is.

Some of the angst over the economy stems from a recognition that the state’s boom times are over.

Even as major corporations like FedEx, UPS and Pratt & Whitney expand here, job growth over all has slowed and in some regions has yet to return to pre-recession levels. The cost of living can be relatively high, especially in the suburbs near the Massachusetts border. New Hampshire’s minimum wage has been stuck at $7.25 an hour, the lowest in New England; attempts to raise it have gone nowhere.

“I’m more or less an angry voter,” said Steve McEntire, 62, of New Durham, whose information technology job was outsourced to China and who now drives a coach bus between New Hampshire and Logan International Airport in Boston. He describes himself as “a bus driver with an M.B.A.” and supports Mr. Trump, whom he likes for “bucking the establishment.”

“I had a good career and saved for retirement, but I would hate to start over now,” Mr. McEntire said. “I’ve got 10 grandchildren, and I can see them being financially strapped.”

Demographic shifts, meanwhile, are transforming the landscape.

For one thing, the state is getting older. Its median age of 41.8 has surpassed Florida’s (41.2), making it the third-oldest state by that measure. That has implications for health care costs, the state budget and the work force.

At the same time, the state is losing young people. From 2000 to 2010, more than 10 percent of those 20 to 29 years old decamped.

Liam Healy, 19, a forklift driver at Exel’s mammoth warehouse in Bow, is heading in the fall to Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, where he will receive some financial aid. That will be less expensive than attending the University of New Hampshire, which has the highest in-state tuition of any public four-year school in the country, according to the College Board. The state’s rate of support for higher education is the nation’s lowest.

“I have to leave New Hampshire to do what I want to do,” said Mr. Healy, who is supporting Mr. Sanders.

The in-migration that helped expand the economy and kept New Hampshire growing faster than much of the Northeast has also slowed. The state still has a net gain of people 30 to 49 years old, but it is smaller than before the recession.

Over all, the state has more turnover than most. Only 45 percent of New Hampshire residents were born here, compared with 68 percent nationwide who live in the state where they were born.

More than 30 percent of those eligible to vote in Tuesday’s primaries were either not here in 2008 or were too young to vote, according to a study from the University of New Hampshire. This makes assumptions about the electorate tricky.

“It’s a completely different state than it was in 2008,” Mr. Smith, the pollster, said.

A version of this article appears in print on , Section A, Page 11 of the New York edition with the headline: New Hampshire Vote Nears Amid Anxiety Across a State. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe